As Boogaroo, above, pointed out, gamers need to pretty much constantly upgrade. Used to be, developers put a lot of time and effort into making software compact and min spec - friendly. No more. The bigger and more demanding the software, the better the computer you need to run it. Everyone wins. Oh yeah, except the consumer.
Thankfully that's not where everyone's at. My parents need their email, a little word processing, and that's it. And if console games keep getting better (and offering network play), it may finally come to pass that gamers have their console and their word machine and never the twain shall meet.
Now that is interesting. I did my thesis on something called the "illusion of control" -- you give people clear cues that they have no control over an outcome, and they'll think they do anyway. It's a little like superstition, but the important bit is you're not fooling them. You are clear with them that they have no control. Other people tested it with rats. We used intro psych students. Manipulated things like having a choice or not (but clearly showed that neither would affect the outcome), and having any input at all resulted in people somehow thinking they had control. I bet it factors into all kinds of human behaviour.
So here we have computers flattering people and people who should know better being flattered. Wow. Wait till the sales people start applying that. "Wow!" says my latest video game. "You're really good!"
Reminds me also of a little program called "Freud" that I remember from my high school days. I remember a friend insisting it was pronounced "frood". Anyway. It was a very basic expert program. It recognized words and a little structure in any question you asked it, and it would respond, with support. A primitive counselling program. Also, it had a face, and eyebrows that would wiggle while it thought (and naturally, it was programmed with a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek psychoanalytic humour). In any case, if I remember correctly, "Freud" became the scourge of many a workplace. People wasted hours, in bits and pieces, talking to it, gleaning whatever they could from its sometimes nonsensical support. Or maybe just liking the attention; I don't know. I should have learned that lesson long ago in the bar scene. People say too much. Just gotta wiggle your eyebrows and say: "Dat's fascinating. Tell me more.":)
Correct me if I'm wrong (always a dangerous thing to say, I know) -- but don't we already have numerous records about us that we're not "allowed" to see? Would this not be yet another, much more comprehensive "protected document"? And if we don't get to read it, we can't clear up any misunderstandings. It all becomes allegation. That's a very dangerous recipe.
I used to think that the gradual shift to an all-credit society would have its benefits (harder to rob your local convenience store of e-dollars... though, wait, it's coming). As time goes on, however, I'm starting to think that there may be benefit, even salvation, in being able to slip through the cracks. Just because I trust my present elected reps (or think them too stupid to do too much harm) doesn't mean the next set is going to be more brilliant, more misguided, and more dangerous than ever. Policies end up staying in place even though the faces running them change. Let's be damn careful what we set in motion.
This reminds me of that old "n% of communication is nonverbal", business (usually quoted as 90%+, though I think the percentile usage is a bit pretentious). For most topics, I don't mind the phone, because at least I get voice inflection. For important contacts, though, or when I'm not sure of my footing (usually opposite-sex stuff) I want to be able to read facial expressions. And email?! Oh, don't ever try to work out a disagreement with your sig other over email if you can help it. Disastrous potential for misunderstandings.
Did tell him -- though we were a little afraid he'd be pissed off. Typical social psych prof -- very nervous in person and a little shy. But super nice guy, and after a small initial shock, he grinned and said he liked it.
I managed to get 5 people in my upper year Intro to Clinical class to try it again (me and four others). This was a seminar of only about 20 people so I figured the number might do. We always had the impression this prof was playing mind games with us, so we decided to give this a try. It failed miserably. He played along for a class and then told us it'd take more than some fourth years to "shape him". Said he saw it in ten minutes, and I wouldn't be surprised. Guy used to do (maybe still does) hypnotic regression for the RCMP.
So one success and one failure. Any sceptics can try this themselves. I'm guessing the average person won't recognize it as easily as this guy. He was a wiz.
I'm wondering at this point if some of the other techniques used in hypnosis might be helpful. I know that some are taught at sales seminars. Observe your target and try to breathe at the same rate, blink at the same rate, use similar gestures (or none if they use none), etc. You'd think such blatant imitation would unnerve the person but it has the opposite effect. Haven't thought about that in awhile, but will have to give it a try over the next little while.:)
Yeah, baby! I'm on a Dell Inspiron 5000 with a measley ATI Rage 4mb video and 256mb RAM. How does it perform? As well as a desktop would with the same hardware, of course. Right now, I'm only just beginning to not be able to play some games on the shelf -- mostly because of the lack of a video card with 3d accel. But here I am, on exchange, and it's here with me. I would not, could not, have lugged a desktop out here with me. Also, I've picked up some software that has helped smooth the edges -- including FPS problems with a few of the faster games.
The things that makes it a decent gaming machine make it a slightly less good laptop. I hate carting it to class -- it's got a 15" screen so it's pretty heavy, but that means I have a full size keyboard and can watch movies without hurting my eyes. Also, with an optical mouse, I can use it anywhere. Also, I've got a surround sound system at home, and you know what? Everything sounds better with a great pair of headphones. And power outages? Our campus got hit with a 9-hour power loss the 2nd day of exams last spring. My classmate had yet to print out her extensive notes for our open-book exam. Whoops. Me? Unaffected. So heavy it might be, but it's the best of all possible worlds.
Now I'm just wishing I'd gone for the DVD drive. The thinking at the time: for the same price as the DVD add-on, I can get an actualy DVD player. I mean, am I going to watch movies in class? (course, then I go on exchange, and here it is, and where's the DVD player?...)
Hehehehe. This reminds me of a little experiment done to our social psych professor. It demonstrates the power of attention, but also shaping (gradual conditioning) in a rather insidious form.
The class had been studying shaping -- where you don't condition for an end behaviour but for an intermediate, easier one. Then when you have that, you shape to the next behaviour in a chain, repeating as necessary. That way, you can condition complicated behaviours that would occur too infrequently by chance to reward the pattern.
The idea was to pay our prof more or less attention the more or less he did a specific behaviour, and we chose teaching from one side of the stage rather than the other (in this case, reinforcing stage left, our right). Was probably good that only about 20 people were in on it, otherwise it might have been too obvious. But when he'd wander to our left, we'd stare at our books, scratch our heads, frown, slouch, and never make eye contact. If he moved to our right, we'd sit up a little straighter, look at him, and basically show we were paying attention. Well, if you ever have a glance around a sizable class, you know there are seldom many people giving their complete attention anyway, unless the prof is riveting. It only took a few classes to have him spending most of his time to the right of the lectern. We kept this up for nearly a month, at which point he basically taught the class from a window sill on the right edge of the room. Most impressivly, he didn't know what was going on. Most likely he just felt "most comfortable" there. Hehehehehehe.
People love to slag psychology but everyone acknowledges the importance of things like "eye contact." It's time we started giving these things some credit. Like the previous poster noting the power a "team of salespeople" could have, this can be powerful stuff.
Possibility for confusion is the test, but I'll never understand why a jury system is suitable for criminal offences (entailing possible deprivation of liberty -- very serious stuff) and not suitable for trademark issues. If confusion is the test, why not have a dozen or more impartial people decide if they would be confused? Have all the usual jury safeguards -- each side able to object to a certain number of candidates to get as unbiased a sample as possible, and go from there.
Personally, I'd have to agree with the above poster -- I did originally think electronic Visa, as in the card. But you can't trademark a common word unless it's acquired a secondary meaning linked to the product. This isn't like calling all tissue papers "Kleenex" or all snowmobiles "Skidoo". I'm sure visas (the passport related ones) were around before Visa was, and this business is using the word with a minor adjustment.
Another factor is supposed to be the point of sale. Are visas and Visa transactions done at the same place? No. So the possibility for confusion diminishes yet again.
Odo: "I plan to investigate the Klingons, the Romulans, Quark, the visiting Tarellians..." Sisko: "You think Quark had anything to do with it?" Odo: "I always investigate Quark"
Erm. I used to think so, too. Then I spent a stint as an air traffic controller. I hate to take away from your reassurance, but there's a lot more planes up there than there used to be, and the majority of pilots still don't seem to be able to respond correctly to things like low level wind shear (which happens very infrequently, thankfully). Paradoxically, improvements in technology have led to some new problems. For example, I'm sending a plane from Pearson to Gattwick and you're sending one back. I put one at a wrong-way altitude for turbulence and uh-oh, we've got a conflict. Used to be, there's so much sky up there, they're going to be miles apart even on a direct course. But now, with GPS, guess what? They're going to be damn close.
The good news is that an awful lot of crappy, outdated and falling apart nav and atc equipment was replaced courtesy of the Y2K scare. No more radar screens blanking out and frantically changing consoles. Well, not nearly as often, anyway.:)
But seriously, you are quite correct. Flying is still much safer than most other forms of transport. People just have a hard time understanding probabilities (hence the success of lotteries). It's the same with Indian trains. One might think they crash all the time, but the staggering number of trains they run daily means that in relative terms, it's very unlikely to be involved in a crash even if you ride them daily your whole life.
The important thing to remember is that safety improvements almost always highlight dangers. Often in the past that dissuaded companies from making those improvements. We cannot afford to take that attitude.
Interesting national difference here, incidentally. In Canada, there used to be (might still be) a show where they air music videos that were otherwise banned and then get to talk about it and tsk-tsk while simultanously being titillated and hiking ratings.
The only discussion that really interested me regarded a Radiohead video that had been partially censored in the U.S. and Canada. For different things. In the U.S., they cut out all the sex. In Canada, they cut out all the violence.
That brings to mind a possible problem here. Who will set the standard and what are they going to allow that some large percentage of parents won't get pissed off about? Sex education? Evolution? Religion? Politics? I mean, access to stuff your parents/community doesn't want you to see is in some ways a saving grace of the internet. Because there's still lots of parents telling their kids that pregnancy happens when a boy sees a girl in a swimsuit. Or Buddhism = evil. Or hey, how about foreign = untrustworthy/dangerous.
I do agree that simply saying, "parents, ya gotta watch your kids" is an impossible oversimplification. No one questions the need to protect our kids. But I firmly believe that a little education and communication goes a lot farther than filters and a separate net can. There will always be Johnny next door with the real thing.
As the above poster noted, copyright protects the expression, not the idea. In a sense this mirrors the function of patents -- ie: we both come up with new designs for, say, a lawnmower; same idea, but two different expressions of that idea. Patent expiry, however, is very important for scientific progression. Is copyright expiry important for artistic progression? I'm not so sure.
I do think that copyright should expire, and lengthening copyrights is worrisome. Websites should be able to play host to classic literature so that it can be studied by all for free. But anyone can at any time use ideas in copyrighted works to create their own expressive works which in turn receive their own copyright. Surely civilization is not stifled by my need to visit the library to expose myself to this particular author's expression. The author has a right to earn from their work, just as you and I do.
In a sense, internet publication of a book, or P2P for music, isn't a far stretch from the library, and purists won't want to see a difference here. However, one interferes with remuneration of the work's creator; the other does not. If we come up with an alternate system of remuneration at some point (and I'd be happy to see it), then there's no reason why the internet couldn't be treated the same way. That is the day that copyright laws should change; not before.
COGDELL, GA--The Cogdell School Board banned the teaching of the controversial "Theory Of Math" in its schools Monday. "We are simply not confident of this mysterious process by which numbers turn, as if by magic, into other numbers," board member Gus Reese said. "Those mathematicians are free to believe 3 times 4 equals 12, but that dun [sic] give them the right to force it on our children." Under the new ruling, all math textbooks will carry a disclaimer noting that math is only one of many valid theories of number-manipulation.
I wouldn't mind seeing some public-funded attempts to break the strangle hold corporations have on the media. But political statements? So one group funds a commercial for... I dunno... gun control, let's say. They're gonna have a thousand/million people shouting down their throats and making their own commercial. Which leads to, what, exactly? Debate? No, more like public ranting. It's like when musicians publicly support political candidates... like that makes the candidate more right? Like the musician's vote is worth more than anyone else's because they hit the top ten?
The difference with these fan-endeavors is that Charleton Heston isn't going to be starring in anti-Farscape ads in response. Although that would be cool.
Um. Ok, I just checked out some pics of Gigi online, and I just want to ask: where do you get your drugs? Cause anything that can make you think Gigi Edgley is the sexiest girl ever could really do wonders for the women here.
Cut him some slack. I agree, P2P widens the pool of potential viewers which can lead to increased sales, but this guy didn't say "I love it so much I've got 13G of it on my hard drive, plus the DVD's" -- sounded to me like he'd just pirated it, period, and those are the people who kill these things.
So many people don't like sci-fi, never mind a particular show, if you love it and don't support it, you're taking a gigantic dump on the people making it happen.
Uh oh./. is a bad forum (for me) to be bringing up relativity, but to my limited recollection this sounds like it.
This was supposed to illustrate the impossibility of any object with mass getting to the speed of light, because as that speed is approached (relative to the outside world), distances shorten, time slows, and mass increases. The "everywhere at once" was a way of describing all distances shortening to zero, mass being multiplied by infinity (if other than zero, couldn't be done), and time standing still. That was then (Astronomy and Math dept, ca. 1989). I hear things have changed quite a bit, but that's what this "warp 10 max" sounds like to me. Funny that they're using the same limitations that were claimed for the speed of light.
I remember that "warp 13" business. But then, I remember watching a movie where a victim had "5th degree burns" -- hehehe. Unless they were talking about sideburns, I don't think it could be done.
I'm jealous! Seeing The Matrix without a shred of info beforehand? Nice!
My best moments like that were seeing Momento and Sixth Sense without knowing anything in advance.
Similarly, I heard people talk about how great Blair Witch was when it first came out, but I'd heard all about it and wasn't that impressed (added to the fact that I'd seen the same thing done, same style, same premise just different theme -- aliens (a lot scarier) several months before. Now that took me by surprise, and really was effective!
Not sure about the U.S., but in Canada, only a firearm is considered a weapon when nothing is being done with it. All other objects -- knives, paper clips, Leonardo DiCaprio videos -- they're only weapons if and when they are used as such.
Other than that, I was just talking about the need for some reverse-onus burdens of proof in the law. PGOBC is a good example, where, "But I didn't know it was stolen" would absolve everyone if allowed. Might as well take that law off the books.
Closely followed by the award for poorest audience-recognition, to the wag who said:
The verdict is in! The award for the most pathetic thing I have ever heard...
Re:Would Poker be a good AI test?
on
Behind Deep Blue
·
· Score: 1
My vote for modern board-game as a test for AI: Stratego. Strategy + bluffing. I'd love to see it compute the odds that I've got a lowly scout chasing his captain around.
Re:Please, Deep Blue is not AI, chess is a limited
on
Behind Deep Blue
·
· Score: 1
Wow. Chess a soul-based activity? And here I thought I often lose because I don't think more than 2 moves ahead. All along it was because I wasn't soulful enough.
Wow. Einstein was emotionally involved with his work, therefore he had to be emotionally involved with his work?
Me thinks your logic circuits need checking.
Slashdot Mirror
As Boogaroo, above, pointed out, gamers need to pretty much constantly upgrade. Used to be, developers put a lot of time and effort into making software compact and min spec - friendly. No more. The bigger and more demanding the software, the better the computer you need to run it. Everyone wins. Oh yeah, except the consumer.
Thankfully that's not where everyone's at. My parents need their email, a little word processing, and that's it. And if console games keep getting better (and offering network play), it may finally come to pass that gamers have their console and their word machine and never the twain shall meet.
Cat weasel flipper board???
ewwww. bad mental image.
Now that is interesting. I did my thesis on something called the "illusion of control" -- you give people clear cues that they have no control over an outcome, and they'll think they do anyway. It's a little like superstition, but the important bit is you're not fooling them. You are clear with them that they have no control. Other people tested it with rats. We used intro psych students. Manipulated things like having a choice or not (but clearly showed that neither would affect the outcome), and having any input at all resulted in people somehow thinking they had control. I bet it factors into all kinds of human behaviour.
:)
So here we have computers flattering people and people who should know better being flattered. Wow. Wait till the sales people start applying that. "Wow!" says my latest video game. "You're really good!"
Reminds me also of a little program called "Freud" that I remember from my high school days. I remember a friend insisting it was pronounced "frood". Anyway. It was a very basic expert program. It recognized words and a little structure in any question you asked it, and it would respond, with support. A primitive counselling program. Also, it had a face, and eyebrows that would wiggle while it thought (and naturally, it was programmed with a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek psychoanalytic humour). In any case, if I remember correctly, "Freud" became the scourge of many a workplace. People wasted hours, in bits and pieces, talking to it, gleaning whatever they could from its sometimes nonsensical support. Or maybe just liking the attention; I don't know. I should have learned that lesson long ago in the bar scene. People say too much. Just gotta wiggle your eyebrows and say: "Dat's fascinating. Tell me more."
Correct me if I'm wrong (always a dangerous thing to say, I know) -- but don't we already have numerous records about us that we're not "allowed" to see? Would this not be yet another, much more comprehensive "protected document"? And if we don't get to read it, we can't clear up any misunderstandings. It all becomes allegation. That's a very dangerous recipe.
I used to think that the gradual shift to an all-credit society would have its benefits (harder to rob your local convenience store of e-dollars... though, wait, it's coming). As time goes on, however, I'm starting to think that there may be benefit, even salvation, in being able to slip through the cracks. Just because I trust my present elected reps (or think them too stupid to do too much harm) doesn't mean the next set is going to be more brilliant, more misguided, and more dangerous than ever. Policies end up staying in place even though the faces running them change. Let's be damn careful what we set in motion.
This reminds me of that old "n% of communication is nonverbal", business (usually quoted as 90%+, though I think the percentile usage is a bit pretentious). For most topics, I don't mind the phone, because at least I get voice inflection. For important contacts, though, or when I'm not sure of my footing (usually opposite-sex stuff) I want to be able to read facial expressions. And email?! Oh, don't ever try to work out a disagreement with your sig other over email if you can help it. Disastrous potential for misunderstandings.
Did tell him -- though we were a little afraid he'd be pissed off. Typical social psych prof -- very nervous in person and a little shy. But super nice guy, and after a small initial shock, he grinned and said he liked it.
:)
I managed to get 5 people in my upper year Intro to Clinical class to try it again (me and four others). This was a seminar of only about 20 people so I figured the number might do. We always had the impression this prof was playing mind games with us, so we decided to give this a try. It failed miserably. He played along for a class and then told us it'd take more than some fourth years to "shape him". Said he saw it in ten minutes, and I wouldn't be surprised. Guy used to do (maybe still does) hypnotic regression for the RCMP.
So one success and one failure. Any sceptics can try this themselves. I'm guessing the average person won't recognize it as easily as this guy. He was a wiz.
I'm wondering at this point if some of the other techniques used in hypnosis might be helpful. I know that some are taught at sales seminars. Observe your target and try to breathe at the same rate, blink at the same rate, use similar gestures (or none if they use none), etc. You'd think such blatant imitation would unnerve the person but it has the opposite effect. Haven't thought about that in awhile, but will have to give it a try over the next little while.
Yeah, baby! I'm on a Dell Inspiron 5000 with a measley ATI Rage 4mb video and 256mb RAM. How does it perform? As well as a desktop would with the same hardware, of course. Right now, I'm only just beginning to not be able to play some games on the shelf -- mostly because of the lack of a video card with 3d accel. But here I am, on exchange, and it's here with me. I would not, could not, have lugged a desktop out here with me. Also, I've picked up some software that has helped smooth the edges -- including FPS problems with a few of the faster games.
The things that makes it a decent gaming machine make it a slightly less good laptop. I hate carting it to class -- it's got a 15" screen so it's pretty heavy, but that means I have a full size keyboard and can watch movies without hurting my eyes. Also, with an optical mouse, I can use it anywhere. Also, I've got a surround sound system at home, and you know what? Everything sounds better with a great pair of headphones. And power outages? Our campus got hit with a 9-hour power loss the 2nd day of exams last spring. My classmate had yet to print out her extensive notes for our open-book exam. Whoops. Me? Unaffected. So heavy it might be, but it's the best of all possible worlds.
Now I'm just wishing I'd gone for the DVD drive. The thinking at the time: for the same price as the DVD add-on, I can get an actualy DVD player. I mean, am I going to watch movies in class? (course, then I go on exchange, and here it is, and where's the DVD player?...)
Hehehehe. This reminds me of a little experiment done to our social psych professor. It demonstrates the power of attention, but also shaping (gradual conditioning) in a rather insidious form.
The class had been studying shaping -- where you don't condition for an end behaviour but for an intermediate, easier one. Then when you have that, you shape to the next behaviour in a chain, repeating as necessary. That way, you can condition complicated behaviours that would occur too infrequently by chance to reward the pattern.
The idea was to pay our prof more or less attention the more or less he did a specific behaviour, and we chose teaching from one side of the stage rather than the other (in this case, reinforcing stage left, our right). Was probably good that only about 20 people were in on it, otherwise it might have been too obvious. But when he'd wander to our left, we'd stare at our books, scratch our heads, frown, slouch, and never make eye contact. If he moved to our right, we'd sit up a little straighter, look at him, and basically show we were paying attention. Well, if you ever have a glance around a sizable class, you know there are seldom many people giving their complete attention anyway, unless the prof is riveting. It only took a few classes to have him spending most of his time to the right of the lectern. We kept this up for nearly a month, at which point he basically taught the class from a window sill on the right edge of the room. Most impressivly, he didn't know what was going on. Most likely he just felt "most comfortable" there. Hehehehehehe.
People love to slag psychology but everyone acknowledges the importance of things like "eye contact." It's time we started giving these things some credit. Like the previous poster noting the power a "team of salespeople" could have, this can be powerful stuff.
Possibility for confusion is the test, but I'll never understand why a jury system is suitable for criminal offences (entailing possible deprivation of liberty -- very serious stuff) and not suitable for trademark issues. If confusion is the test, why not have a dozen or more impartial people decide if they would be confused? Have all the usual jury safeguards -- each side able to object to a certain number of candidates to get as unbiased a sample as possible, and go from there.
Personally, I'd have to agree with the above poster -- I did originally think electronic Visa, as in the card. But you can't trademark a common word unless it's acquired a secondary meaning linked to the product. This isn't like calling all tissue papers "Kleenex" or all snowmobiles "Skidoo". I'm sure visas (the passport related ones) were around before Visa was, and this business is using the word with a minor adjustment.
Another factor is supposed to be the point of sale. Are visas and Visa transactions done at the same place? No. So the possibility for confusion diminishes yet again.
Odo: "I plan to investigate the Klingons, the Romulans, Quark, the visiting Tarellians..."
Sisko: "You think Quark had anything to do with it?"
Odo: "I always investigate Quark"
Erm. I used to think so, too. Then I spent a stint as an air traffic controller. I hate to take away from your reassurance, but there's a lot more planes up there than there used to be, and the majority of pilots still don't seem to be able to respond correctly to things like low level wind shear (which happens very infrequently, thankfully). Paradoxically, improvements in technology have led to some new problems. For example, I'm sending a plane from Pearson to Gattwick and you're sending one back. I put one at a wrong-way altitude for turbulence and uh-oh, we've got a conflict. Used to be, there's so much sky up there, they're going to be miles apart even on a direct course. But now, with GPS, guess what? They're going to be damn close.
:)
The good news is that an awful lot of crappy, outdated and falling apart nav and atc equipment was replaced courtesy of the Y2K scare. No more radar screens blanking out and frantically changing consoles. Well, not nearly as often, anyway.
But seriously, you are quite correct. Flying is still much safer than most other forms of transport. People just have a hard time understanding probabilities (hence the success of lotteries). It's the same with Indian trains. One might think they crash all the time, but the staggering number of trains they run daily means that in relative terms, it's very unlikely to be involved in a crash even if you ride them daily your whole life.
The important thing to remember is that safety improvements almost always highlight dangers. Often in the past that dissuaded companies from making those improvements. We cannot afford to take that attitude.
Interesting national difference here, incidentally. In Canada, there used to be (might still be) a show where they air music videos that were otherwise banned and then get to talk about it and tsk-tsk while simultanously being titillated and hiking ratings.
The only discussion that really interested me regarded a Radiohead video that had been partially censored in the U.S. and Canada. For different things. In the U.S., they cut out all the sex. In Canada, they cut out all the violence.
That brings to mind a possible problem here. Who will set the standard and what are they going to allow that some large percentage of parents won't get pissed off about? Sex education? Evolution? Religion? Politics? I mean, access to stuff your parents/community doesn't want you to see is in some ways a saving grace of the internet. Because there's still lots of parents telling their kids that pregnancy happens when a boy sees a girl in a swimsuit. Or Buddhism = evil. Or hey, how about foreign = untrustworthy/dangerous.
I do agree that simply saying, "parents, ya gotta watch your kids" is an impossible oversimplification. No one questions the need to protect our kids. But I firmly believe that a little education and communication goes a lot farther than filters and a separate net can. There will always be Johnny next door with the real thing.
As the above poster noted, copyright protects the expression, not the idea. In a sense this mirrors the function of patents -- ie: we both come up with new designs for, say, a lawnmower; same idea, but two different expressions of that idea. Patent expiry, however, is very important for scientific progression. Is copyright expiry important for artistic progression? I'm not so sure.
I do think that copyright should expire, and lengthening copyrights is worrisome. Websites should be able to play host to classic literature so that it can be studied by all for free. But anyone can at any time use ideas in copyrighted works to create their own expressive works which in turn receive their own copyright. Surely civilization is not stifled by my need to visit the library to expose myself to this particular author's expression. The author has a right to earn from their work, just as you and I do.
In a sense, internet publication of a book, or P2P for music, isn't a far stretch from the library, and purists won't want to see a difference here. However, one interferes with remuneration of the work's creator; the other does not. If we come up with an alternate system of remuneration at some point (and I'd be happy to see it), then there's no reason why the internet couldn't be treated the same way. That is the day that copyright laws should change; not before.
Georgia School Board Bans 'Theory Of Math'
COGDELL, GA--The Cogdell School Board banned the teaching of the controversial "Theory Of Math" in its schools Monday. "We are simply not confident of this mysterious process by which numbers turn, as if by magic, into other numbers," board member Gus Reese said. "Those mathematicians are free to believe 3 times 4 equals 12, but that dun [sic] give them the right to force it on our children." Under the new ruling, all math textbooks will carry a disclaimer noting that math is only one of many valid theories of number-manipulation.
I wouldn't mind seeing some public-funded attempts to break the strangle hold corporations have on the media. But political statements? So one group funds a commercial for... I dunno... gun control, let's say. They're gonna have a thousand/million people shouting down their throats and making their own commercial. Which leads to, what, exactly? Debate? No, more like public ranting. It's like when musicians publicly support political candidates... like that makes the candidate more right? Like the musician's vote is worth more than anyone else's because they hit the top ten?
The difference with these fan-endeavors is that Charleton Heston isn't going to be starring in anti-Farscape ads in response. Although that would be cool.
Um. Ok, I just checked out some pics of Gigi online, and I just want to ask: where do you get your drugs? Cause anything that can make you think Gigi Edgley is the sexiest girl ever could really do wonders for the women here.
Cut him some slack. I agree, P2P widens the pool of potential viewers which can lead to increased sales, but this guy didn't say "I love it so much I've got 13G of it on my hard drive, plus the DVD's" -- sounded to me like he'd just pirated it, period, and those are the people who kill these things.
So many people don't like sci-fi, never mind a particular show, if you love it and don't support it, you're taking a gigantic dump on the people making it happen.
This was supposed to illustrate the impossibility of any object with mass getting to the speed of light, because as that speed is approached (relative to the outside world), distances shorten, time slows, and mass increases. The "everywhere at once" was a way of describing all distances shortening to zero, mass being multiplied by infinity (if other than zero, couldn't be done), and time standing still. That was then (Astronomy and Math dept, ca. 1989). I hear things have changed quite a bit, but that's what this "warp 10 max" sounds like to me. Funny that they're using the same limitations that were claimed for the speed of light.
I remember that "warp 13" business. But then, I remember watching a movie where a victim had "5th degree burns" -- hehehe. Unless they were talking about sideburns, I don't think it could be done.
It's all about the writers. (ok, other things can ruin it, but it's the good writing that makes the diff)
holodeck = low budget? I agree, that makes no sense. holodeck = anything possible. Anything possible = $$$
I'm jealous! Seeing The Matrix without a shred of info beforehand? Nice!
My best moments like that were seeing Momento and Sixth Sense without knowing anything in advance.
Similarly, I heard people talk about how great Blair Witch was when it first came out, but I'd heard all about it and wasn't that impressed (added to the fact that I'd seen the same thing done, same style, same premise just different theme -- aliens (a lot scarier) several months before. Now that took me by surprise, and really was effective!
Other than that, I was just talking about the need for some reverse-onus burdens of proof in the law. PGOBC is a good example, where, "But I didn't know it was stolen" would absolve everyone if allowed. Might as well take that law off the books.
Finally, I must disagree. Mod chips are dope. ;)
Closely followed by the award for poorest audience-recognition, to the wag who said:
The verdict is in! The award for the most pathetic thing I have ever heard...
My vote for modern board-game as a test for AI: Stratego. Strategy + bluffing. I'd love to see it compute the odds that I've got a lowly scout chasing his captain around.
Wow. Chess a soul-based activity? And here I thought I often lose because I don't think more than 2 moves ahead. All along it was because I wasn't soulful enough.
Wow. Einstein was emotionally involved with his work, therefore he had to be emotionally involved with his work? Me thinks your logic circuits need checking.